‘Breaking Bad’: ‘It’s for defense’

No huge developments — just a lot of coping with last week’s murder-by-boxcutter — so this’ll be a quickie post.

Understandably, Gus’ actions seem to have heightened Walt’s paranoia. He bought a gun from an independent contractor, who told him that, if he truly just needs a gun for defense, as Walt kept claiming, he could save himself some money and a possible felony conviction by going through legal channels. Walt’s notion of defense, of course, has shifted to the other side of the law, and so, he shelled out the big bucks for a gun with the serial number filed off. And then, as the seller advised, he spent a lot of time practicing his draw, which does need some work.

Walt also freaked when Skyler left a message asking him about their pending purchase of the car wash — the recording, he said, suggests to anyone who might hear it that they’re buying a car wash!!! Skyler pointed out that, since that’s how they’re going to be laundering their money, there shouldn’t be an issue with putting such a notion on tape. But that speaks to how jumpy Walt is. (And they may not be getting the car wash, anyway. Skyler got tired of waiting and went to see the owner herself, offering him $879,000; he recognized her, and said that Walter White’s price is $20 million. Which might be a bit steep, even for Walt.)

Meanwhile, Jesse invested in a ridiculously massive sound system, a roomba (two needs that “Parks and Recreation”‘s Tom Haverford would have taken care of in an upgraded DJ roomba) and a fair amount of cocaine, then decided that the company of his dimwitted besties wasn’t sufficient — they needed to par-tay. (Side note: Badger scored the most quote-able line of the episode, about America-hating zombie Nazis in a video game: “They’re the Taliban of the zombie world.”)

And so, they through a monster of a party, an affair so massive that the poor little roomba seemed to be working overtime to keep up with everything being tossed on those hard wood floors. It hit a speedbump when the pizza arrived, massive uncut pies. The lack of designated slices was a hard nut for the drug-addled geniuses to crack; we will probably never know if they were able to figure out how to slice them for themselves, because Andrea showed up to confront Jesse about the cash-stuffed envelope she found in her mailbox after Tomas’ killers were, themselves, mowed down. She wanted to know if somebody was going to come looking for the cash; he told her no, and she drove away, money in hand, her little boy looking forlorn in the backseat as he waved goodbye to Jesse.

Meanwhile, back at the lab, a new watcher came in, accompanied by Mike. (An early scene of Mike sitting in a bar, wiping a bit of blood spatter from his cuff, suggested that even he is a little rattled by Victor’s demise.) Walt asked Mike for a sit-down with Gus to discuss recent events; Mike told him he would never see Gus again. And so, Walt decided to go to him, Heisenberg hat and Heisenberg dead-eyes in place, gun in his pocket…and then his cell phone rang. (So very Walt. Heisenberg would have either turned the ringer off or left his cell in the car.) A voice — did anybody recognize it? Was that Gus? — said, “Go home, Walter.” All traces of Heisnberg vanished as Walt tried to figure out who had spotted him.

And he apparently decided to go back to his original plan — to go through Mike. He followed Mike to the bar — Mike, having spotted him, opted to let him follow him — and bought him a drink. (Mike had also noticed that Walt was carrying a gun, and commented on that, too.) Walt made the case that they are both in the same boat with Gus, and made it clear that he wanted to make it more of a two-man boat, with Gus fed to the sharks. He asked Mike to put him in a room with Gus — “I’ll do the rest.” Mike finished his drink, then made his perspective very clear: He slugged Walt, kicked him a few times, then left the bar, leaving Walt on the floor.

The party at Jesse’s finally broke up, and he was left alone, sitting against one of those massive speakers, utterly alone and clearly cracking.

Nothing much has changed for Walt and Marie, except that he is lashing out at her more and more and he’s ordering more and more crystals. Anybody want to guess at what that’s about?

So, what did you think of the episode? Post your comments below, and let’s chat about it.